United Nations releases citizen experience report on Vietnam

Vietnamese citizens reported a decline in government performance in five out of six areas in a survey by the United Nations Development Programme.

Only scores for public service delivery increased. Scores for transparency, local accountability, corruption and government procedures have all declined in the last year, it says.

The UNDP surveyed 14,000 randomly selected citizens nationwide last year for the Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index to measure their satisfaction with government services.

Transparency saw the most substantial drop by 7%. There was less publicity of government land use plans and land prices, and fewer people had opportunities to give feedback on them, the UNDP said.

The second biggest drop was for corruption by 3%. More citizens paid bribes to get land use rights, compared to 2014. And less are confident about the government’s willingness to fight corruption. 37% of the surveyed citizens felt their local government is serious about the issue.

Public service delivery was measured in four areas – district hospitals, primary education, basic infrastructure and safety. While overall performance increased, user satisfaction with health fell to its lowest in five years.

Overall, land use licenses have been the lowest performing service. 22% said that they had to wait over 100 days to get the necessary documents, instead of the 30 days required by law. In infrastructure, hilly provinces faced the biggest challenges.